Provincetown, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 7.9 miles southeast of Provincetown, MA
The coast 7.9 miles southeast of Provincetown, MA has been retreating at a measured 0.63 feet a year, USGS's own long-term rate for this stretch, built from historical shoreline positions rather than a single survey. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 6.3 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
This is a roughly 3.5-mile stretch of coast, not one address or parcel - USGS's own transects run every few hundred feet, but that's finer than any one property needs, so this page reports the stretch nearest Provincetown, MA. Centered near 42.01°N, 70.04°W. USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic assessment last surveyed this stretch through 2007-2009, computing the rate with its LRR method. Other US regions were surveyed in different years, sometimes decades apart, so this page states its own rather than implying one national vintage.
25 years at this rate
If 0.63 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 7.9 miles southeast of Provincetown, MA would retreat roughly 16 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
Where this fits nationally
This reading comes from 87 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.19 ft/yr. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 254. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: Bertsch-Oceanview, CA, 2737 miles away, ranks 384 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 0.34 ft/yr, 0.5x this stretch's rate. Provincetown, MA, 2 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, reading slight erosion at 0.69 ft/yr.
Provincetown, MA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.